Introduction: Hermeneutics
Derek Poole

Comment
Alan Wilson

From the Director
David Porter

What is Hermeneutics?
Brendan W Devitt

The Bible and the Church
Alwyn Thomson

Hear the Word of the Lord
David Bruce

Patience: An attribute of love
Graham Cheesman

The Bible and Christ
Alwyn Thomson

Understanding Scripture: Issues of Gender
Fran Porter

The Bible and the Christian Life
Alwyn Thomson

Take me to the Theatre
Steve Stockman

Anabaptist Hermeneutics
Walter Klassen

Reading the Bible Then and Now
Alwyn Thomson

Cross-Cultural Communication
Alan Wilson

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CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Familiar words are dangerous, especially when they forfeit their power and impact. Frequent usage and shallow understanding water them down. In becoming common currency in the evangelical world, many of the sayings of Jesus have been devalued. We have wrenched them out of their inspired context and misapplied them. One in particular is found four times in the synoptic gospels: "Take up the cross and follow me." ( Matt 10:38; Matt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23 ) Christians have no problem quoting these words. Preachers love to preach from these texts. Those involved in discipleship use them as the bedrock for their training. However, I feel we need to take a step back from our customary understanding of these words and view them in the light of the present political and cultural situation of Northern Ireland.

Take up your Cross
One of the basic principles of interpreting scripture is that it should always be interpreted in its context. When we look at the contexts where Jesus said, "Take up the cross and follow me" , they have all one thing in common. Jesus only speaks these words in the context of difficult relationships. In Matthew 10:24 he is addressing difficult relationships within the family unit. Moreover, in Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34 and Luke 9:23 there is conflict in the relationship between Peter and Jesus. In the mind of Jesus, there was a connection between handling hostile relationships and taking up the cross.

Life can have no reconciling power or redemptive qualities until I take up my cross as Jesus did his. My cross should imitate and resonate with his cross. The message of the cross of Jesus is communicated to this present world through my smaller crosses. Taking up the cross will have profound healing influence on our divided communities. It will display heart attitudes that will confront and confound the entrenched bitterness and sanitised sectarianism that have characterised much of the Northern Ireland Evangelical community.

The kind of person God uses to bring healing to broken relationships and restore crushed communities is someone who has the heart attitudes and the mindset of cross taker, someone who knows how to carry a cross, like Jesus.

When I speak of the cross we need to carry, I am not referring to some kind of suffering that is inflicted upon us. Anguish and distress have been the hallmarks of life in our province for the last thirty years, yet this has not produced any real peace, nor can it. I am referring to the attitudes that filled the heart of Jesus as he took up his cross. Think of some of the heart attitudes Jesus displayed as he bore his cross.

• He was able to take up hls cross because his heart was full of love.
• He did not allow the injustice of his cruel death, to rob him of the freedom to forgive.
• He knew that the pain of forgiving was consistent with the character of God, and how his Father had designed life.
• He knew that to love your enemy invariably brings God glory.
• He knew that to exact vengeance by coming down from his cross would never meet the deep needs of his own loving heart, or the demands of justice.
• He knew that sacrificial expressions of radical love are the only way to reach the world with transforming grace.

Cross-shaped living is the most radical influence our society could ever experience, for in taking up our cross we become the antithesis to all sectarianism and prejudice that has blighted our society and church. Any refusal on our part, to take up our crosses as Jesus commanded will have personal and community consequences. I want to consider both personal and community consequences of lives that are not cross-shaped.

Personal Consequences
Refusal to take up our cross results in the decommissioning of our lives.

When we refuse to take up our crosses, when we do not have the heart attitudes of a cross carrier, when our lives are empty of love, grace, mercy, compassion and forgiveness we decommission our lives. A decommissioned life is a life that is out of use, a life that makes no difference, a life with no influence. It is a life whose under-development is reflected in its inability to bring change or hope. A decommissioned life is a tragedy, for it means that we have become casualties of apathy, victims of our own inertia with an addiction to mediocrity, a mediocrity we consider as normality. The commission of Jesus to take up the cross and follow him will ensure that our lives become animated with grace, love and compassion. Taking up the cross will mean we discover life to the full. For the heart attitudes of a cross carrier become compelling motivations for rejecting the status quo, taking risks, reaching out, embracing our enemies and building relationships. These are things a decommissioned life would never do.

Refusal to take up our cross will result in us becoming prisoners who need to be released.

The call of Jesus to take up your cross and follow was also a summons to freedom. Every time Jesus said, "Take up your cross and follow me," he continued by stressing, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will find it'. In the mind of Jesus, there is an indissoluble bond between taking up our cross and finding life. We have all heard expressions like 'finding life' or 'looking for life'. Jesus is saying that to find life, to experience authentic freedom, we need to take up our crosses.

What is the association between carrying our cross and experiencing freedom? Our capability to carry our cross is conditional upon what is in our hearts. If we cannot take up our crosses, if we do not have the heart attitudes of a cross carrier, then there must be something wrong in us. When a person is in bondage to attitudes that are antithetic to the cross, it is because they have never experienced freedom. Many people will go through their lives, never taking up their crosses, because they are imprisoned to bitterness, anger, resentment, sectarianism and prejudice. These same people do not have the freedom to show love, mercy, grace or forgiveness. It is only when they have the heart attitudes of a cross carrier, they will be released from such a cruel sentence. Taking up our crosses, loving unconditionally, reaching out to others, embracing the enemy, building a community, is our declaration of freedom.

Community Consequences
Refusal to take up our crosses will mean that the church will be ghettoised behind the walls of it's own security zones.

The Evangelical community of Northern Ireland is increasingly becoming a dying cluster of ghettoised religionists with little if any relevance. Many denominations and congregations have degenerated into security prisons, which exist for crossless people who have decommissioned themselves. They are prisons where freedom has been replaced with indifference and inertia. We cannot take up our crosses and remain entombed in our church building or our smug fellowships.

The natural inclination of a cross carrier is to go beyond the walls, beyond the programmes, beyond the structures, beyond the traditions we have erected to make us feel safe and good about ourselves. As Jesus took up his cross and went beyond the city walls, so must we. In his going beyond the walls, the world saw the glory of holy, God-like vulnerability. Going beyond the walls was nothing new for Jesus, it was something he did all through his life. When he embraced the leper, when he sat and talked with the woman at the well, when he dined and danced with the tax collectors, he was going beyond the walls. All through his life Jesus had the heart of a cross carrier. He went beyond the walls of tradition and respectability. We cannot have the heart attitudes of a cross carrier and remain self contained and uninvolved in the real world. If we take up our crosses, then going beyond the walls will be natural and spontaneous. Reaching out, loving the unlovely, building community, showing forgiveness must characterise the Evangelical Church. This is only possible when we take off the cross.

What a difference there would be both in our land and in the church if we were to take the call of Jesus seriously. If the Church of Jesus Christ were to become cross carriers, because their hearts are full of love, grace, compassion, mercy and forgiveness, healing would come to the church and to the land. If solutions to the problems in Northern Ireland do not come through the church, then there will be no real solutions. Governments, politicians, assemblies, councils and cross border commissions can do their best. However, any solution or proposal they may come up with will be deficient, because it will not be radical enough to meet the real needs of people's hearts. Only people who have the heart attitudes of a cross carrier will have the freedom to go beyond the walls and bring healing of unconditional love to our community. No wonder Jesus spoke about the cross we need to carry.

Alan Wilson - member of Milltown Baptist Church. He has just completed two years with the Baptist Missions Evangelism Team in Donegal.